Burned Detective's Family Says `Time Is Running Out'

The family of burned Plantation police Detective Jim O'Hara is bracing for the worst.

"It looks like time is running out for us and for Jim," Mark Porio, O'Hara's brother-in-law, said on Tuesday.

On the day after Thanksgiving, Porio said, doctors told O'Hara's family that he could die within a week.

O'Hara reportedly is semiconscious and has had a high fever for two weeks. Doctors cannot pinpoint the cause of the infection, Porio said.

O'Hara has been in the intensive care unit of Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital since July 25.

On that day, he and fellow officer Joseph Alu went into a home where a man was holding his ex-girlfriend's two teen-age daughters hostage and threatening to blow up the house. As O'Hara and Alu tried to intervene, the man ignited a firebomb, killing himself and the girls and severely burning both officers. Alu is recovering from burns over 26 percent of his body. O'Hara suffered burns over 77 percent of his body.

Janine O'Hara, the officer's wife, keeps a daily 12-hour vigil at the hospital. Because she spends so much time with him, she leaves notes on the desks of her husband's doctors, telling them of changes she's noted in O'Hara's condition, Porio said.

The officer is unable to speak, so he responds to yes-and-no questions by blinking his eyes, Porio said.

Despite what the doctors have forecast, Porio said O'Hara told him through a series of blinks, "I refuse to give up."